Chapter Five Razor
Chapter five
Razor
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
Yeah. Not the greatest opener after months of silence, but my brain had short-circuited the second I saw them.
Lennon. Here. At the magistrates. The bloke I’d been dodging for months because he couldn’t look at me without seeing every mistake I’d ever made.
And Tristan. Standing beside him in a suit and tie like the slickest temptation on earth.
My mind scrambled, trying to sort the order of the world, and failing.
“Which one you talking to?” Lennon jutted his chin, and, fuck me, he had that face on. The one he used to give me when he’d caught me looking at his brother too long. That quiet, sharp-edged I know what you’re hiding look. Amused. Accusing. Waiting.
I hadn’t said anything back then.
Sure as shit weren’t saying anything now.
I swallowed, gaze darting where it shouldn’t.
To Tristan. Hot as sin in a suit hugging him as if stitched to his body.
Hair neat and perfect. Pretty little thing I’d had bent over twelve hours ago, breathing my name like prayer and profanity all tangled up, now here at the place I was about to step in and threaten.
My stomach dropped.
He looked different in daylight. Worse. Better. Dangerous.
Lennon cleared his throat, waiting for my answer.
Right, which one was I talking to?
I pocketed my phone to wave at Lennon, then threw my fag to the ground and stamped it out. “You. Obviously.”
Because he didn’t know, did he? Couldn’t know Tristan and I knew each other. Wouldn’t know about last night. Or any of the nights before that. Far as Lennon was concerned, Tristan was just some rando bloke.
Except he fucking wasn’t, was he?
He was the bloke who’d got under my skin so deep I’d forgotten how to breathe properly. The one who could knock my pulse sideways by blinking at me. The one who, apparently, did law in a fucking suit as if this wasn’t some sick joke from the universe.
Lennon laughed, and I could’ve punched the sound out of his throat if he weren’t still my blood.
My family. Even if he didn’t want me near him anymore.
Even if we were hanging by a thread we didn’t talk about.
So I stood there, waiting for something that made sense. Some explanation. From either of them.
“Billy Amos got lifted,” Lennon said once he got himself under control. “Bag in his pocket.”
“Shit.” I scrubbed a hand over my jaw. “Told him to stay off the fucking street.”
“Yeah?” Lennon’s glare sharpened. “Told him yourself, did you?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. Tight. Firm. True. “Kid’s thirteen. Got a baby sister, a mum on benefits, and a dad inside. One wrong step and he’s over the edge.”
“Yet he had wraps in his pocket.” Lennon folded his arms. “Wonder how that happened.”
Accusation. Hard. Direct.
“There’s a lot of bad people on the street.” I sniffed. Looked away. Felt Tristan’s eyes on me like lead.
“That there are,” Lennon agreed, and I turned back to him.
We stared each other down, the air between us twisting into barbed wire. Then Lennon flapped his hand at Tristan, my Tricky, as if introducing some casual stranger.
“He’s his defence counsel.”
My heart punched my ribs. Only then did I let myself look at Tristan.
Properly. For a single beat. And fuck. He looked back at me with those impossible blue eyes, hitting me as hard as getting clipped in the jaw.
Pulled something out of me I didn’t want anyone to see, too.
Certainly not here. In front of Lennon. Or anywhere public enough for the world to carve it open.
“You alright?” Lennon tilted his head. “You look like you seen a ghost.”
I tore my gaze from Tristan. “Not likely.”
“Cause he ain’t chasing you no more, eh?”
My jaw locked. No answer. None that wouldn’t blow my world apart.
Tristan straightened, professionalism sliding over him like a suit of armour. “I have a hearing.”
Our eyes met. Just a second. But enough for my stomach to drop clear through me.
And Lennon fucking saw it. All of it. Because he always had.
No matter how hard I tried to shield things from him, he knew me.
Knew the tells. The shifts. The way I softened without meaning to, same way he’d clocked me back in the day when Levi walked into a room and my guard slipped for half a breath.
Same thing now.
Worse now.
Because the man I was looking at was Tristan. And Lennon saw me following him with my eyes as he turned and walked into that courthouse, fingers sliding beneath his collar where I’d had my tongue last night.
I hated it.
Hated how easily Tristan unravelled me.
How Lennon clocked it.
Mostly hated myself for not being able to look the fuck away.
I ripped my gaze from behind the glass and turned it on Lennon. “You here for Billy then?”
“Yeah.” He eyed me. “He started coming down the gym. Thought I’d got through. Obviously not.”
“Ain’t his fault, Len.”
“I know.” His glare burnt a hole clean through me.
“Ain’t my gear either.” I lowered my voice so it wouldn’t travel to whoever might be listening in.
It wasn’t the place to have this conversation, but I needed Lennon to understand.
I’d spent so long with him hating me. Justifiably, sure.
But hate is exhausting. And he already had way too much on his plate.
“You know I don’t poach kids. Don’t peddle shit cut with God-knows-what. ”
“Whatever, Rich.” Lennon went to shoulder past me.
I didn’t want to leave it like that. Us, distant and sharp-edged. “How’s fatherhood? Those babies keepin’ you up?”
He paused.
Micah and Marley. His New Year miracles. Twelve hours of labour, emergency section. All the things he’d never tell me himself. I only knew because Amara sent me a photo. And I sent flowers and those stupid matching baby suits without signing my name, hoping he’d let them in the house.
‘Uncle Rich’ hadn’t been welcome for a long time.
Might never be.
“They’re good.” For a heartbeat, he was the old Lennon. The one who’d once been my brother. “You should consider it.”
“Babies?” I snorted. “Get enough of that with Maisie. Kid’s nearly crawling now.”
“Yeah. Amara sees her down at some stay-and-play in the church hall.”
I nodded, my gut twisting. “Funny how life goes full circle, right?”
Lennon turned fully towards me. “Why you here, Rich?”
I hesitated, then let it out. “Darren’s hearing.”
“Come to support him, have ya?”
“You know as well as I do, he deserves nothing but a cell. He was handed a dozen outs. Took none. Didn’t spare a thought for Keeley or that baby. And he sure as fuck didn’t spare one for me.” My voice dropped. “I’m here to rectify his thinking.”
“You’re here to threaten him. Don’t dress it up.”
I exhaled. “And if I go down, what happens to Kee then?”
Lennon’s expression shifted. Pain, anger, something darker. And I glanced back through the glass as Tristan finished speaking to some bloke in a suit, shook his hand, and walked off towards another courtroom. Lennon caught it. Caught me watching.
Caught too much.
“I’m gonna give you one chance right now.
” He turned back to me. “One chance to speak. And I’ll forget every fuck-up between us long enough to listen.
To be your mate. Your fucking conscience, if I have to.
Like when we sat on the tower rooftop, thinking the city’d be ours.
When we talked shit that mattered and shit that didn’t. ”
My chest tightened. The cracks under my skin splitting wide.
“I’ll listen to you.” He stepped closer. “The same way you listened to me when I told you I was in love with Monica and you had to break it to me she’d been screwing Jerome behind my back. I’ll be that ear for you. If you want it.”
Want it?
Christ. I wanted nothing more than to sit with Lennon again and talk until the sun came up.
To fix whatever was left between us. Go back to being idiots on rooftops before the world carved us into pieces.
But how the fuck could I? Not standing here.
Not with the things I was doing, the reasons I was here, with guilt crawling up the back of my throat.
And not when half of what I felt was a mess, and the other half I didn’t know how to say out loud.
I looked down at the concrete, trying like fuck not to break open in front of him.
Lennon dropped his voice to a knife’s whisper at my ear. “You think you’re a big man, yeah? Razor ruling the street with his fists and gear.” He tutted. “But I know Richie. And Richie’s a big fucking coward.”
My head snapped up, eyes locking with Lennon’s as if he’d grabbed the back of my neck and forced me to look.
“Say it,” he said, voice low, steady, impossible to dodge. “And maybe I’ll think otherwise about you. Might think you have a heart.”
“Len…” The word scraped out of me, rough, too close to pleading. I’d never done that with him before. I didn’t want him tearing me open here. Not where anyone could see the fucking mess inside.
He snorted. “Don’t worry, Rich. I know anyway. He did it for you.”
A jolt hit me straight in the ribs. “What? Who?” How and why would Tristan tell Lennon about me. About him. Maybe even Levi?
Lennon glanced back at the building where Tristan had disappeared, then turned to me. “He came to me. When he thought you were dead.”
My stomach dropped. The world lagged half a second behind his words.
“What…?” I managed. How would he even know…?
“Like you said, life’s full circle. And if you’ve got one ounce of care left in you, you’d stay the fuck away from him. Looks like he’s got a life. A decent one. A moral core. Don’t gut that out of him.”
He held my stare, waiting for me to break.
Waiting for the crack he used to know how to find.
But I’d built harder armour since then. Or tried to.
Eventually, he shook his head and started down the steps.
I watched him go, throat tight, something ugly and hurting twisting under my skin, until he paused halfway down, voice carrying back to me.